


Quartet

by Raven (singlecrow)



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:15:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four Christmases in the life of Nita Callahan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Quartet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astraev](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astraev/gifts).



_i. fourteen_

Nita's mom died in the summer. Years later Nita would remember that first Christmas afterwards with all the chilly clarity of ice, that time when the first heat-haze of grief had lifted, and they looked at each other in that grey December and realised she was never coming back. They did their preparations for Christmas with a studied enthusiasm, and Nita and her dad decorated and bought gifts, staunchly cheerful, for Dairine, and Dairine and Nita made lists of what they wanted and _ooh_ ed and _aah_ ed at the Christmas lights, for their dad, and it was a relief to all of them when the Rodriguez family asked them over to dinner on Christmas Day, instead.

Kit sat next to Nita; Carmela sat next to Dairine; Tom and Carl sat on either side of their dad; the food smelled delicious, and none of them felt obliged to hold up a conversation. Kit's dad said grace, and they all settled in to eat. Afterwards they helped clear away the plates and had whatever dessert they could manage, and retreated to the den to drape themselves across couches and digest.

Nita wasn't expecting anything like it when Carmela lifted her head and said, "Are you religious, Nita?"

"What kind of a question is that?" Kit snapped; right now he was especially touchy on Nita's behalf, and she'd noticed and thought fondly of him for it. "Nita, don't answer that."

Softly, Nita said, "No, I don't think I am."

" _Relax_ , Kit," Carmela said, with a sidelong glance at him. "I noticed you said grace earlier, that's all. I didn’t know you were religious."

Nita opened her mouth to say _my mom would have liked me to_ , and then didn't. Her mother's faith had been quiet, fierce, private. She remembered, suddenly, her mother facing down the Lone Power: that had been the battle of old, old enemies.

Dairine said, quietly, "You take an Oath in the One's name. Even if you don't do Christmas or Christianity or whatever, that's religion. That's belief."

"No, it isn't," Nita said, sharply. "No, it isn't."

Kit looked at her. "Nita..."

"I don't believe in the One," Nita said, furiously, pulling at the charm bracelet on her wrist, not caring if she twisted it out of shape. "I don't have to, I know the One exists. I serve Life. I don't _believe_ , I don't have faith."

"Nita!" – and in the midst of emotion Nita realised Dairine was genuinely shocked, possibly for the first time, but she didn't care, and the bracelet wouldn't come loose.

"The One took my mother from me" – and inside, again, she felt that clear, icy chill of realisation, and went outside, slamming the door behind her.

 

*

 _ii. seventeen_

"Tom, did you go to college?"

Tom looked up from his box of decorations, surprised. "Sure I did."

Nita took a deep breath. The room was quiet and dim, lit only by the strings of lights Tom was carefully draping around the tree, and her voice seemed unusually loud. "Where did you go?"

Tom smiled at her, the pink and green lights reflecting in his eyes. "Amherst. The summer after I finished I went to work in New York City. That's how I met Carl, you know. He was a senior at NYU then and we got to be partners, and you know" - he waved a hand - "partners. I'm not saying you need a college degree to write for television, but it helps to have a sense of humour about these things. Why do you ask? You're deciding where to apply right now, aren't you?"

"It's just…" Nita hesitated. "I don't know if I want to go, Tom. I mean… I guess not everyone knows what they want to do with their lives when they're my age, but that doesn't mean I don't. I've got my wizardry projects, you know, figuring out the peridexis, that kind of thing, and I don't know why I can't do that, and maybe work in my dad's business as my day job, you know? And my dad, he was apprenticed when graduated high school. It's not like I _have_ to go."

"What does your dad think about it?" Tom asked.

Nita smiled. "He's excited, I think. He keeps dropping hints that I should start planning campus visits. He wants me to go."

Tom smiled, a little wryly. "I think I would be doing the same, if I were him. Listen, Nita. Unlike most girls of your age, you've saved the world on multiple occasions."

Nita laughed at his matter-of-fact tone. "You missed that bit of tinsel," she pointed out, and he fixed the drooping part. "Yeah, I've saved the world. With other people's help, not by myself, of course."

"Of course," Tom said, grinning. "Tell me, why did you do that?"

Nita frowned. "It's the world. It's my home, it's where my friends and family and nearly everyone I've ever known lives, it's...." She paused. "It's what you do."

"Right." Tom nodded. "And let's say that tomorrow, the Lone Power engineered some terribly specific kind of disaster, such that everyone that you, Nita Callahan, personally care about, would be safe. Perhaps they'd be lifted safely to the moon while the rest of the planet burned, something like that. Would you still try to stop the disaster from happening?"

Nita blinked. "Well, of course."

"Really?" Tom looked at her. "Even though there's no one on the planet you have any connection to at all? Maybe we could even save your neighbourhood too, so the places you care about would be safe? Would that make a difference?"

"Tom, stop it." Nita frowned. "It's in the Oath. You'd save it for _Life's_ sake."

"Right!" Tom looked happy. "Right. And why is that in the Oath? Why do we care about Life? What's valuable about it?"

Nita was still frowning. "Tom, it's _Life_. Why are you asking me all these questions?"

Tom put the box of decorations down and came to sit next to Nita on the couch, reaching for a mug of coffee he'd left on the side. "Nita, you're very young," he said, softly. "Far too young to have experienced even a hundredth part of all that Life, in its infinite combinations and variations, has to offer. Why do we save the world? Why is Life worth saving? To know for certain that it is, you must be a part of it – you must know it, understand it, learn it. When you took the Oath you swore to protect Life – but not like a child protects an ant farm. Wizardry doesn't take you apart from the world; it makes you _more_ a part of the world."

Nita leaned back on the couch. "You think I should go to college, don't you," she said evenly.

"I would never seek to influence your decision in any way," Tom said. "Pass me the star, would you?"

Nita grinned and handed it to him, and said a word in the Speech: it burst into cold fire, and Tom smiled back in the dim golden light.

*

 

 _iii. twenty_

"Dairine," said Nita, in tones of heartfelt woe, "has started a band."

"Good for her," Kit said, distractedly, scribbling something down on a sheet of paper. It was Friday, their regular day for catching up on each other's lives, but they'd both been late to the little café, wrapped up in heavy coats and scarves and absorbed by the end-of-semester whirl. "I'm never going to finish this before the end of today. Whose bright idea was it to have final paper deadlines the week before Christmas, anyway?"

"Kit, you're not listening to me."

"Yeah, I am. Dairine, started a band. Go on."

"That was it!" Nita said. "Dairine has seriously started a band. She practises in my dad's garage with two other girls she's at school with. And she's started wearing clothes with safety pins in, and keeps on talking about the fascist regime, and, oh, the violence inherent in the system, and privilege dynamics and how we're all complicit in our own oppression!"

"Bet your dad's taking that well," Kit said. "Why did I decide to write about the Apollo programme in the broader context of twentieth-century history? I could have written about anything, anything else. Maybe something with, I don't know, _secondary sources_."

"She's not doing wizardry any more," Nita said, quietly.

"What?" Kit's head snapped sharply up. "That can't be right. No, I know it isn't." He reached in his bag and pulled out his manual. "There, see? _Callahan, Dairine E. Status: Active._ "

Nita looked over his shoulder. "That's weird. I haven't seen Spot around for months, and she never talks about it any more."

"Doesn’t mean she isn't doing it, though," Kit said. " _Wizardry does not live in the unwilling heart._ "

"Yeah, that's what I was afraid of." Nita sighed. "Look, I'm going to ask Tom and Carl about it."

"Nita, she's started a band. Just because we were terminally uncool in high school doesn’t mean she has to be, too."

Nita ignored him, fished out her own manual, flipped to the message page and wrote, _Dear Tom_. Kit groaned. "Don't put the part about the safety pins in, at least!"

The answer came half an hour later, when Nita had given up trying to hold Kit's attention and had started on a problem set, and Kit was on his third cup of coffee, and starting to jitter. In response to her three-paragraph query, it was just one line.

"Let me see," Kit said, and grinned broadly when she pushed it over to him.

"I'm going to get some coffee for myself," she said, a little grumpily, and left the manual open on the table at the same page. The words gleamed: _There's more than one way of saving the world._

*

 _iv. twenty-four_

By the time they got to 42nd Street, they were both out of breath from running and laughing so much, and Christmas shoppers thronging towards Times Square had started to look at them oddly, so Nita pulled Kit into a nearby Starbucks and ordered cinnamon lattes for both of them with extra whipped cream, and pushed Kit's wallet back in his hand.

"Nita," Kit said, "you don't have to..."

"Of course I have to! Of course I do." Nita grinned; Kit's face was pink with exertion, and with joy. "Of course I do, _Doctor_ Rodriguez."

"Don't jinx it, I might never finish!" Kit blurted out, and then seemed to realise how silly he was being; he sat back in his chair and laughed as Nita brought over the drinks.

"But did you, or did you not, just wow them with your, let me see if I can remember, _exemplary command_ of your period and deeply reassuring grasp of theory and contexts? Should I start talking about stipends and fellowships and a _fine addition to our PhD programme_?"

"Nita!" Kit covered his face with his hands; he was blushing a deeper pink. "Thank you," he said after a moment, and took a happy slurp of whipped cream.

Nita leaned back in her chair and grinned. "You're welcome. Kit, you deserved this. No one could have worked harder."

And that was true, she was thinking; Kit had spent weeks holed up in their tiny apartment, occasionally disappearing and returning with stacks of library books, reading and reading and theorising and outlining and reading some more, and Nita had told Kit's mom that everything would be fine after the proposal was written while not quite believing it herself. Mrs. Rodriguez had seemed to pick up on that; at any rate, she had sent Carmela over with food and instructions to take both of them out for some fresh air. December in New York City had meant the air had been very fresh indeed, but Nita had been sincerely grateful.

"You know," she said, "it's ten years now since my mom died."

Kit lifted his head. Nita smiled at him. "I'm not trying to spoil the mood, or anything," she said. "She would have been proud of you, Kit. Just as proud as your mom is."

Kit smiled back, a little shyly. "Do you think so?"

"I know so." Over time, she'd forgotten the exact details: her mother's smile, the tenor of her voice. But she'd held the kernel of her mother's body and she knew in her bones how much she'd been loved. "She'd have been happy for us both, you know. She was proud of what we'd achieved even when we were kids."

"It's not the same," Kit said, thoughtfully. "Saving the world before you're fifteen and defending a thesis proposal – they're not really in the same league."

"I don't know." Nita shook her head. "Power drops off with age for a reason, doesn't it? You learn, you teach when you're older. The raw power the new wizards have is no use without that."

"Do we need to teach them _history_ , though?" Kit said, grinning.

"Why the hell not," Nita said. She leaned forwards and licked the whipped cream off the end of his nose. "Why not."

"You ever want to go back to school, Nita?" Kit asked suddenly. "You could, you know."

"Maybe one day," Nita said comfortably. "I'm happy tutoring, I'm happy working with my manual. The One works in mysterious ways, even my getting kids through their SATs. Maybe some day the world will be treated to my awesome thoughts on peridexis and algebraic number theory. Right now, you can be the brains of the partnership."

Kit laughed and punched her lightly in the arm. She punched him back. He tugged at her hair, and looking to see no one was watching, she whispered a few words in the Speech and blew golden glitter into his coffee, into his hair. "Merry Christmas, Kit," she said, softly, and kissed him.


End file.
